Andy Hough

Aldi v. Supermarket v. Wal-Mart

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It is often debated as to where is the cheapest place to buy groceries. I decided to do a price comparison of 10 common grocery items.

Items

Aldi

Supermarket

Wal-Mart

Peanut Butter 18oz.

$1.29

$1.29

$1.64

Grape Jelly 32oz.

.99

$1.55

$1.06

Wheat Bread 20oz.

$1.49(24oz)

$1.49

$1.47

Oatmeal 42oz.

$1.69

$2.05

$1.98

2% Milk ½ gallon

$1.76

$1.99

$1.98

Large Eggs

$1.75

$1.89

$1.85

Lettuce 1 head

.99

$1.29

$1.48

Bananas 1 lb

.37

.69

.67

Chicken Breast 3lbs.

$5.99

$5.85

$5.00

Ground Beef 1lb

$1.89

$1.69

$1.83

Totals

$18.21

$19.78

$18.96

The results came out as I expected with Aldi being cheapest then Wal-Mart and the supermarket last. I used the cheapest store brand where applicable for the comparison. I probably should have used a different item than the chicken breast since it skewed the results somewhat.  Since Aldi was cheaper on most products though I think the results are a fair price comparison. The supermarket was cheaper on some products and they offer double coupons. If you used coupons strategically you could probably get the supermarket cost to about the same as the others. As a single person it is easiest for me just to do the bulk of my shopping at Aldi.

Goals Grade Card

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Analyzing the progress I’ve made on my goals this year I gave myself the following grades.

  • Don’t incur any debt other than student loan debt- This goal I either meet or don’t so it doesn’t really correlate to a letter grade.  Grade-Pass
  • Improve my blogging- I have done better at posting more consistently and made some other improvements to my blog.  I’m still not writing the quality of content I would like though.  Grade- C
  • Lose 20 pounds- I’ve made a few starts and stops on this goal but haven’t worked towards it on a consistent basis yet.  Grade- D

I definitely have to do more on my last two goals.  I have plans on how to achieve them I just need to do them.

How I Lived for 3 Months on $450

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In the summer of 1997 I had a plan to travel to Guatemala and teach English.  Between the time I booked my flight and my departure date I did an extremely poor job of managing my money and only had $450 left.  It probably would have been smarter to change the flight date but I just decided that somehow I would get by on what I had.

After arriving in Guatemala I had to take a 10 minute,$5 taxi ride and 4 hour,$4 bus ride to get to my destination.  Since my return flight wasn’t for 3 months I knew I needed to find some cheap accomodations.  I had a page with a map and a list of several cheap hotels that I had photocopied out of a travel book.  That night I couldn’t find any of them though and ended up having to get a $20 motel room. That might seem cheap but it was expensive considering how little money I had.

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Measuring the Past Value of a Dollar

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In my Wills and Estates class the other day I learned of a website called Measuring Worth.com. This site lets you measure the historical worth of a dollar. A dollar from my birth year is worth from $5.01 to $16.63 today depending on what measure you use. Using the Consumer Price Index which is the most common measure you get a value of $6.21. That helps you realize the effect of inflation.

They also have several other calculators including one that lets you measure what a historical investment in the Dow Jones, S&P 500, or Nasdaq would have returned. Those returns don’t include reinvested dividends though which makes the returns lower than they should be. Also, for those from the United Kingdom they have calculators for the pound using the UK GDP, CPI, and other data.